15. And lest it should seem
tedious and prolix to wish to consider each person singly, the same
theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many
Æsculapii and five Dionysi, six Hercules and four Venuses, three
sets of Castors and the same number of Muses, three winged Cupids, and
four named Apollo;4157
| 4157 So
Cicero (iii. 23); but Clemens [vol. ii. p. 179] speaks of five, and
notes that a sixth had been mentioned. |
whose fathers they mention in like
manner, in like manner their mothers,
and the places where they
were
born, and point out the origin and family of each. But if it
is true and certain, and is told in earnest as a
well-known
matter, either they are not all gods, inasmuch as there cannot be
several under the same name, as we have been taught; or if there is one
of them, he will not be known and recognised, because he is obscured by
the confusion of very similar names. And thus it results from
your own action, however unwilling you may be that it should be so,
that religion is brought into difficulty and confusion, and has no
fixed end to which it can turn itself, without being made the sport of
equivocal illusions.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
